By the time I settled her carefully against the pillows in my bed with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders and a cool washcloth on her forehead, I was awake enough to realize this probably wasn’t ending with one sick kid.
Three years of solo parenting had taught me many things. One of them: if one child vomits at three in the morning, the others are probably loading the cannon.
I grabbed an empty mixing bowl from the kitchen and set it beside Bianca. “You’re getting the good bowl.”
She blinked tiredly. “The stainless steel one?”
“Yes.”
“I feel honored.”
“You should.”
She curled deeper into the blanket while I reached for my phone to text work that I probably wouldn’t be coming in.
Before I could unlock the screen, the doorway filled with another tiny figure.
Billie. Lightning flashed at the exact wrong moment, illuminating only her outline while thunder cracked overhead hard enough to shake the windows.
Her curls looked wild. She stood perfectly still in the doorway, staring at me with the solemn expression of a ghost child preparing to deliver bad news from beyond the grave.
I rubbed a hand over my face. “Not you, too.”
Billie blinked slowly.
“Billie,” I said carefully, “can I help you?”
Another flash of lightning lit the hallway.
“I throwed up.”
Right. Of course she had. “Where?”
“A mystery place.”
“Billie.”
“The upstairs bathroom,” Bianca said weakly. “I heard her.”
“Thank you, sweetheart.”
Billie shuffled into the room, looking utterly offended by the mere act of existing. “My bones feel tired.”
“That’s called being sick.”
She began to cry. “I don’t want to die, Daddy. You need to take me to the hospital.”
I crouched down to her level and moved the matted hair from her face. “You’re not dying, baby. You just have a stomach bug.”
She shook her head so violently that I thought for sure she’d throw up again, directly in my face,Exorcist-style.
“No, I saw it. I saw my organs fall into the toilet. I can’t believe this is happening. I can’t believe I’m going to die so young.”
I guided her to the bathroom. “Billie, I know it’s scary to vomit, but I promise, what you saw was simply the contents of your stomach. Not your internal organs.”
She wasn’t convinced, but she was too sick to argue. I got her cleaned up, then got fresh pajamas out of her closet, and settledher beside Bianca in my bed. She drank water from a small cup, which she held with both hands like her life depended on it, then she curled up under the blanket.
“This is the worst night of my life,” Billie whispered.
